NCAFC reinvigoration conference, Birmingham, 4 June

After this year’s NUS conference, several newly elected student union sabbaticals and anti cuts groups began discussing how we could get the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts active again.

This led to a statement being written (below) which expresses why we feel the NCAFC needs to be reinvigorated, calling for a conference on the 4th June at Birmingham University (11am-4pm).

It was initially signed by Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance but has since been endorsed by three other local anti fees and cuts groups: Stop Fees and Cuts at the University of Birmingham, Hull Students Against Fees and Cuts and Merseyside Network Against Fees and Cuts. You can add your or your group’s name by emailing [email protected]

We call on all local anti cuts groups to attend and discuss the future for the NCAFC. Accommodation will be provided and there will be a fare-pool to help everyone with travel expenses.

This shall be updated very soon.
For further details, contact Daniel Cooper 07840 136 278 or email [email protected]

The Government and education bosses are on the offensive. As well as £9,000 fees and the scrapping of EMA, students and education workers face a huge wave of cuts and closures. The cuts at London Metropolitan – including 70 percent of its undergraduate portfolio – shows the scale of what is coming. This is a full-scale drive to reshape education in the interests of profit, to create an education system in which the majority are educated to know our place.

But resistance is increasing. After national action by UCU in March, several public sectors unions are likely to strike together in June. The student movement has receded since our revolt last winter, which not only galvanised tens of thousands of students but inspired action by workers too. There are still active anti-cuts groups on most campuses: what they lack is any real means of democratic coordination, to sustain the movement during periods of retreat and prepare the way for a new upsurge.

As activists and organisers in November-January movement, and supporters of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, we are calling an activist meet-up on 4 June in Birmingham to discuss developing national coordination. The NCAFC currently lacks democratic structures through which local groups and activists can coordinate and build an accountable national movement. It has become increasingly difficult for people outside a small circle in London to get involved. That is why just at the point where NCAFC played such a central role in the burgeoning student movement, it began to stall rather than develop as a campaign.

We are calling a gathering to genuinely open up the campaign to a new layer of student activists and student union officers, and develop the structured, democratic national coordination we need.

While we do not want to pre-empt the decisions of such a meeting, this is what we propose as the basis for a reinvigorated National Campaign:

* Opposition to all cuts and fees – free education and living grants for all. Tax the rich to fund education and services. Education to produce socially aware, critical thinkers, not pliant material for exploitation.

* Militant action, including direct action and occupations, to defeat the cuts, locally and nationally.

* Solidarity with workers in struggle as a top priority. Organise for concrete student-worker unity at every level from the campus up.